


i fell asleep around half past death (my soul is searching for stars to swim with)

by sammyspreadyourwings



Series: Bingo 2020 [7]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood, Brian May's 1974 Hepatitis Diagnosis, Character Study, Drabble, Gender Identity, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi, Not Really Character Death, Questioning, Sad Brian May, Suicide Attempt, ask to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25929196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammyspreadyourwings/pseuds/sammyspreadyourwings
Summary: Brian May dies five times in his life.
Relationships: John Deacon/Brian May/Freddie Mercury/Roger Taylor
Series: Bingo 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863202
Kudos: 31
Collections: Dork Lovers Server Challenges





	i fell asleep around half past death (my soul is searching for stars to swim with)

**Author's Note:**

> I was driving. Really liked the first two paragraphs as a concept, so here we are. Another five one

Brian May has died five times.

The first time it had been just before he takes his first breath of life. Doctors say it happens sometimes, especially with a history like his mother’s, that there is just a little too much fluid in the lungs that prevents that first healthy wail. His mother has always told him that it took forty-five seconds of the doctor rubbing his chest to get a tiny cough and the cry was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.

Brian doesn’t remember his move ever complaining about how much he cried as a child, even though his grandmother had said he would cry whenever he felt like it.

The second time was when he was seventeen when the poisonous words of his classmates and elders sink into his brain. He sits in the tub with ice-cold water barely awake as it turns red. Brian cuts his wrists the wrong way (or the right way depending on the point of view as he wakes up staring at the ceiling with his wrists bandages and his mother sobbing over his bed).

His chest aches with burns from the paddles. They tell him that the ambulance got to him and his heart stopped and a lot of other things that lead to him spending a month in strict therapy and a promise to not do it again.

The words of his classmates haven’t gone away, they still tell him that its wrong for a man to love another man, and Brian doesn’t feel as “manly” as he should. Not that he wants to be a woman, he doesn’t want to be either. Every time he tried to tell his therapist what made him do it, and he digs and digs at the reasoning, his wrists burn.

Brian dies at seventeen and while his heart is pushing blood through his body he doesn’t feel alive again until he is telling the people that he wants to spend the rest of his life with that he is sexually attracted to him and that he doesn’t feel completely comfortable being a man. They tell him, “okay, what next?”

He feels warmth under his eyes as Freddie teaches him how to line his eyes with kohl and make them big and wide like “a woman’s or Roger’s.” His heart pushes blood through his veins again when Roger drags him from store to store, trying to find clothes that make him feel in that something else that he feels, clothes that aren’t masculine but couldn’t be accurately described as feminine. He takes his first breath when John comes back from the library, hair a mess and eyes red, (they’re more alike and dissimilar which is why Freddie says they fight so violently) as he read pages and pages of things to help him understand how Brian feels.

He feels alive again at twenty-three and he didn’t realize how not alive he felt before.

The third time he dies, Brian doesn’t know that he does. The stomach pain that he had been burying underneath painkillers and alcohol reaches a peak and then cuts out like a cord pulled from a speaker.

He’s alive, and then he isn’t.

Roger’s hands on his face coaxes him back. His heart thudding in his chest again and he gasps but the pain is filling his head and he is looking around, but everything is blotting black and there are too many voices for him to cut in.

Strangely his last thought is wondering how where Red has gone.

The fourth time is in the hospital. They explain it to him after the surgery, chasing his bandmates (soulmates, life partners, his everything) from the room. It is filled with medical jargon, but he does know what it means that his heart stopped and required emergency intervention. His chest hurts and it feels like the paddle burns again.

Brian dies and only him and the doctors know that he did. The illness spreads and gets worse and he thinks with the threat of losing his arm (again) enters the realm of possibility. He almost wishes that he had died on that table. Surgery deaths just happen, and it might be easier to understand than Brian denying everything offered to him until he finally wastes away and dies.

When the others are let into the room however, they hover and kiss at his lips, his cheeks. They ignore the bandages and ask how the surgery went and what they must do next. Brian smiles wildly and promises him that the surgery was a success and that he is looking at a full recovery.

The chill that is following him around since the collapse at the stage is finally gone. Away with the specter of death. Brian wonders if it's chasing him specifically or if he is born with phenomenally bad luck

The fifth time Brian dies is when he is standing on the roof of a building in Munich. It isn’t the recording studio and it isn’t the hotel; they would find him. He thinks about heated words and ignored feelings. He thinks about his heart being tread upon countless times.

They say that they don’t need his guitar and he get lost in the thoughts of them trying to figure out what way he feels most comfortable being addressed. He says with ‘he’ because it's comfortable not because the feelings of not being quite either have faded.

It’s easier, too. He thinks a little selfishly. They don’t have to fight the press on using a different form of address and it saves the band. Things are easier with four men, or four people appearing to be men. Brian also thinks that it keeps the words away from his wrists again.

The meaning behind those scares are secrets that are going to die with him. Strangely the boys only brought it up once, in confused worry when they saw the crisscross scars. Brian told them to ignore them, that it's in the past.

Now the words are coming to haunt him as they ignore him and leave him in the past.

He dies for the fifth time that night, and it isn’t long until the dirt keeps falling on his grave as John loses himself to his anger and drink and Roger chases dreams other than Queen and Freddie boldly discovers more of himself now that the times seem gentler to men like him.

Brian dies for a fifth time that night and the irony is that he thinks that _Live_ Aid is the only way to save him.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, leave your thoughts and feelings below or come talk to me on tumblr.


End file.
